


Death Faith

by Kytt



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Death, Deathfic, Gen, Loss, M/M, Old Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 01:20:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kytt/pseuds/Kytt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an old graveyard, a final goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Re-Posted from Tumblr, where these things often originate.

_‘Death Faith’_  
 _Fannie Lea Heaslip_

_She made a little shadow-hidden grave,_  
 _The day Faith died;_  
 _Therein she laid it, heard the clod's sick fall,_  
 _and smiled aside-_  
 _"If less I ask," tear-blind, she mocked, "I may_  
 _Be less denied."_

_She set a rose to blossom in her hair,_  
 _The day Faith died-_  
 _"Now glad," she said, "and free at last, I go,_  
 _And life is wide."_  
 _But through long nights she stared into the dark,_  
 _And knew she lied._

 

It’s a private little graveyard. The sort of place that tourists would visit, taking photos of the quaint and picturesque stones, unmindful in their callous pursuit of scenery that that they celebrate another’s grief and loss. Everything about the cemetery is old, or carefully built to fool the eye into thinking that it is. The paths are carefully lined with gravel and the ancient chestnuts are encouraged to shed their blooms in the politest manner possible. Even the squirrels are much more restrained in their games of tag.

The old groundskeeper was finally forced to retire after decades of faithful service. His replacement is related to the caretakers of years past, in some complex and bloodless manner that only those who make a life of looking after the dead could ever hope to understand. The job is simple - mow the grass, clear the trash, plant the flowers, rake the walks. Remain unobtrusive and silent unless directly spoken to. Grief, someone had once told him, was a personal matter between you and those for whom you grieve. And he listened. The tasks are well suited to one an unassuming and quiet nature, and the caretaker draws comfort from the steady rhythm of his days. The living are rarely a bother, the dead even less so.

Given the complex set of instructions he had received concerning it, the famed headstone is deceptively simple. As if to deliberately spite the weeds that have been permitted to grow over-long around it, it’s still elegant in every way which man lying beneath might have wanted, and humble in every way that he was not. Granite, green and black, carved and polished by hand, now maintained only by the loving ministrations of wind and rain. A name that had once scorched the world, now slowly returned to the legends that had spawned it. The caretaker recognises the name of course, but gives it no further thought than the schedule of feeding trees and quite possibly even less, since the trees require his active attention, while all that the gravestone asks from him is neglect.

Only one person has ever come to visit that particular marker. The first time the caretaker caught sight of him, the thought that crossed his mind was that the man whose bank account contained more zeros than the gross national product of some of the US’s trading partners, was not nearly as tall as he appeared on television.

That first explosive visit left the stone with a fresh scratch running down the veined surface, and a shallow river of scotch, quickly absorbed into the parched ground. Thereafter the groundskeeper took great care to keep him-self busy elsewhere, raking the already perfectly flat paths, or trimming bushes that had not a single leaf out of place.

The years passed. Months went by when the engineer might not stop by at all, and then come daily over the course of two weeks. Occasionally he would leave behind gifts - leather bound books written by long dead authors, coarse pieces of stone born on a planet that was not Earth, curious curious pieces of tech, that glistened like some other-worldly seashell, waiting for the right ear into which it might whisper all of its secrets, a bottle of scotch worth more than the caretaker would make in several years. Once, drawn by a flickering light, the custodian found a small child’s toy, its red, plastic nose glowing for all that it was worth.

The gravestone continued to degrade, weeds and grasses choking out any sign of order, until it becomes a tiny island of chaos in the orderly sea of otherwise perfectly manicured memories. As the caretaker aged, so does the visitor - silver and grey slowly, but with gradually increasing determination creeping in through the once sable hair and goatee. Ever a trend-setter, the inventor rekindled the fashion for canes when he took to carrying one - a stylish affair of redwood and brass, that struck the grave’s keeper as a bit archaic knowing as he did who and what the man was, and the sort of marvels his fortune was made of, but as with all things that he saw and thought, he said nothing, except perhaps to the squirrels.

One day a new set of instructions concerning the stone are delivered, and after a momentary surprise, the caretaker carried them out with the same patient competency that he exhibited in all of his tasks. Gone are the waist-high grasses. The shards of glass are carefully raked and thrown away and the stone is once again polished to a mirror-like gloss.

The visitor arrives that evening, while the grave’s keeper is busy sweeping the leaves, a task that seems to take considerably longer these days. ‘Hello asshole,’ The man’s voice is hoarse, gruff with scotch or unshed tears. ‘Been a while. Miss me?’

Bending carefully, leaning on his cane for balance, he sets down two crystal tumblers and a familiar, amber bottle on the stone’s surface, before lowering himself as well.

‘Well, I miss you, Loki. Every day. Every single fucking day. I miss you more than I missed freedom or light in that god-forsaken cave. I miss you more than I ever missed my Father or Coulson or even Pepper, and yes, you were right, you son-of-a-bitch, she’s finally walked out on me.

You are the last thing I remember before I pass out, and the first thing I look for when I wake up. I miss that broken-glass sound you called laughter, I miss the scalpel of your wit. I miss your arrogant, haughty Asgardian entitlement and I miss your sorrow. I miss the taste, the smell, the sight of you. I miss your hair in my hands, I miss your teeth on my neck, I miss how you felt inside me and I miss that I could make you scream. I miss sleeping beside you and I miss knowing that you had my back in a fight. I miss that you could beat Jarvis at chess, but that you never got the genius of the Stooges. I miss that you always took the last slice of pizza, even when you were so full I thought you’d burst, just so that Thor couldn’t have it, and that you would sneak me hot cups of coffee, when you thought I wasn’t looking. I… I miss you. I miss us, Loki, but I just can’t anymore.

Thor tells me that your people go to Valhalla, or some-such thing and that you’re happy where you are. I really hope so, because it means that at least one of us is. I keep waiting and hoping and thinking it’s just another one of your dumb-ass pranks, and if I turn the right corner, you’ll be there with that self-congratulating grin on your face - Oh, did I startle you Stark? Surely you were not really concerned? Foolish mortal, it was all just a trick after all, God of Mischief, remember?’ The inventor pulls off a surprisingly convincing impression of a prince’s cultured, noble tones. ‘So I just keep looking, but you are never there. I’m sorry Loki, but I’ve finally run out of corners.’

Stark is silent long enough that the caretaker thinks that maybe he had fallen asleep, or worse yet, died, and wouldn’t that be the irony to end all ironies? When he finally speaks, his voice shatters the graveyard’s silence, startling the caretaker into dropping his broom.  
‘Dammit it, Loki - you swore to me! You gave me your fucking WORD!! So much for your fabled, unbreakable, Asgardian oaths. I’m the mortal here. I’m the one who took stupid chances. I’m the one with a hole in my heart and poison in my veins - I WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE FIRST!’

He paused then briefly, as if expecting a reply, then shook his head, running a hand through his hair with the gesture of a much younger man, and for a second the graves-keeper sees him as he must have looked decades earlier, when the lines at his eyes and mouth were the result of laughter and not loss.

Another sip, slower this time, the empty hand wiping a memory of dust from the stone’s surface, fingers trailing the lines of the name, as if it is a lover’s face.

‘It was worth a try, I guess. I suppose if you were going to come back, you would have done so by now. If only to kick my ass. The mess was intentional, in case you were wondering. I know how much you hated having anything out of place. God of Chaos my ass - remember when I told you that you should have been called the God of Obsessive-Compulsive cleaning ladies? Pretty sure if Thor wasn’t standing right there you would have tossed me out the window a second time.’

The engineer smiles, a fond, sad smile, that tugs at the caretaker in a way that few other things have. ‘This is goodbye, Loki. I won’t be coming back. I can’t anymore. I love you, but I need to move on. Find a new obsession. Build Jarvis a body, try and convince Pepper to come back and work for me again, get Rogers drunk, beat the Widow at poker. Something. Anything. I’m sorry, Loki. Goodbye.’

With the aid of his red cane, the richest man alive leaves the tiny graveyard for the very last time, his steps barely disturbing the carefully tended path.

The caretaker watches, patiently waiting to lock up the gates. From the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees what might be a green-gold shadow separating itself from the fold of a tree, raising a hand in an elegant, final farewell, but the quick turn of his head proves it to just be a pair of squirrels, playing in the last rays of a setting sun.

**Author's Note:**

> So some time ago, one of the Tumblrgrrrrrls - Felifay (silly girl that she is) - said that there just weren’t enough FrostIron death-fics out there. Hrm… yes. I decided that I would write one. Once again, it’s not what anyone expected.
> 
> I should point out something very important regarding the name. My WonderBeta, the Evil Gremlin herself, RikaCain named it. I sent this to her nameless. I told her that it needed one, and she came up with it and a poem from which the name is drawn. My Gremlin is awesome and deserving of all the cookies.


End file.
